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19
Joel L. Fleishman
25 Genesis 4: 7
reform- minded legislators, regulatory and investigative agencies, and investigative
journalists continue to seek to circumscribe the potential for corruption, but it is
unquestionably a perpetual battle of almost Sisyphean frustration.
Why, then, do there seem to be so many more instances of corruption than
there were in the past? Because those watchdog groups and investigative journal-ists
focus on turning up wrongdoing, which then gets spread all over the country
and the world by the pervasive 24/ 7 media coverage— on television, over the Inter-net,
on blogs, in newspapers and in magazines. So the very same entities that are
responsible for counteracting corruption create greater notoriety for the corruption
that does exist, and makes all of us think it is worse than it used to be. The mis-deeds
are much more transparent than ever before. That does not mean that there
any more of them. For example, the conventional wisdom among sports observers
in the past was that many officials bet on the contests they were officiating, but
there were nowhere near as many professional sports reporters then with the media
platforms they have today.
But what has happened should be a cautionary sign of what the Bible, in Gen-esis,
states to be always the case: “ Sin crouches behind the door, yearning for the
tempted to resist its blandishments, yearning to be overcome, NOT to overcome.” 25
Why has it begun to happen in NC and elsewhere at this particular time? I
think that the explanation is deeper than simply a recurrence of the same old thing.
I think it has to do with the increasing migration of individual and institutional
behavior from the for- profit sector, in other words the market system, where self-interested
motivation in behalf of corporations and their employees is not only
acceptable but laudable, to the public and nonprofit sectors where naked self- inter-ested
behavior is usually inappropriate and often unethical if not illegal.
The market system has created in America a robust, dynamic society that
is preeminent in the world in its capacity to produce goods and services, even if
we have yet to solve the problems created by their inequitable distribution across
society as a whole. I strongly believe that the market system fulfills that function

19
Joel L. Fleishman
25 Genesis 4: 7
reform- minded legislators, regulatory and investigative agencies, and investigative
journalists continue to seek to circumscribe the potential for corruption, but it is
unquestionably a perpetual battle of almost Sisyphean frustration.
Why, then, do there seem to be so many more instances of corruption than
there were in the past? Because those watchdog groups and investigative journal-ists
focus on turning up wrongdoing, which then gets spread all over the country
and the world by the pervasive 24/ 7 media coverage— on television, over the Inter-net,
on blogs, in newspapers and in magazines. So the very same entities that are
responsible for counteracting corruption create greater notoriety for the corruption
that does exist, and makes all of us think it is worse than it used to be. The mis-deeds
are much more transparent than ever before. That does not mean that there
any more of them. For example, the conventional wisdom among sports observers
in the past was that many officials bet on the contests they were officiating, but
there were nowhere near as many professional sports reporters then with the media
platforms they have today.
But what has happened should be a cautionary sign of what the Bible, in Gen-esis,
states to be always the case: “ Sin crouches behind the door, yearning for the
tempted to resist its blandishments, yearning to be overcome, NOT to overcome.” 25
Why has it begun to happen in NC and elsewhere at this particular time? I
think that the explanation is deeper than simply a recurrence of the same old thing.
I think it has to do with the increasing migration of individual and institutional
behavior from the for- profit sector, in other words the market system, where self-interested
motivation in behalf of corporations and their employees is not only
acceptable but laudable, to the public and nonprofit sectors where naked self- inter-ested
behavior is usually inappropriate and often unethical if not illegal.
The market system has created in America a robust, dynamic society that
is preeminent in the world in its capacity to produce goods and services, even if
we have yet to solve the problems created by their inequitable distribution across
society as a whole. I strongly believe that the market system fulfills that function